State, feds give Sprinter green light

A Sprinter train arrives in Oceanside during the press conference that announced that the Sprinter service will resume this Saturday. The Oceanside-to-Escondido light rail system has been shutdown since March 9 due to accelerated brake rotor wear on all 12 Sprinter trains. Photo by Don Boomer/UT San Diego

A Sprinter train arrives in Oceanside during the press conference that announced that the Sprinter service will resume this Saturday. The Oceanside-to-Escondido light rail system has been shutdown since March 9 due to accelerated brake rotor wear on all 12 Sprinter trains. Photo by Don Boomer/UT San Diego

NORTH COUNTY  When the first Sprinter trains roll back into service Saturday after a two-month shutdown of the light-rail network, they will do so with new brake parts blessed by state and federal regulators.

Officials with the North County Transit District hope that assurance, and pledges that they’ve strengthened their maintenance and oversight practices, will bring passengers back on board the Oceanside-to-Escondido system, by the thousands.

“We’re very pleased to welcome you back into our trains,” Deborah Castillo, a transit agency spokeswoman, said at a news conference at the Oceanside Transit Center on Thursday.

Castillo added that the district had completed “extensive safety testing” and installed new brake rotors on the line’s 12 trains, work all overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Railroad Administration.

Both regulatory agencies gave the Sprinter the green light to resume service, according to representatives reached Thursday by U-T San Diego.

The sleek teal and blue trains were taken offline March 9 after state inspectors found accelerated brake rotor wear on the vehicles. Ever since, replacement buses, vans and taxis have shuttled the thousands of passengers who had relied on the Sprinter across North County, with many riders complaining that the buses doubled or even tripled their commute times.

During a two-month period that one transit official described Thursday as “a nightmare,” new brake rotors had to be ordered from Europe, then received, installed, tested and finally approved.

Officials initially said the repair process could take up to four months.

Matt Tucker, the district’s executive director, said earlier this month that measures have been created to prevent this ordeal from happening again. Officials have blamed a communication gap between maintenance staff and top agency officials for the accelerated wear not being addressed sooner.

Tucker said in early May that a joint maintenance review committee had been formed to regularly bring top agency officials together with the district’s maintenance contractors.

Tucker added that top agency leaders would meet monthly as part of a “Contractor Risk Register Roundtable” to review the performance of its contractors.

He also said that an employee “whistleblower hotline” would be formed to report safety concerns. Tucker has said information about the Sprinter brake wear “got caught in a bottleneck and did not work its way up to us.”

Richard Berk, the agency’s former rail maintenance officer, resigned on March 1, days after state inspectors called for a shutdown of the network after finding the wear on the original rotors. He said in March that the state’s stringent brake performance standards were to blame for the problem. He also said that over several years, he had repeatedly informed his supervisors at the district about the pending trouble.

District officials have said there are no written records to back up Berk’s statements.

Frances Schnall, a transit agency spokeswoman, said on Thursday that the district believes the wear was caused by the replacement of the trains’ original brake pad with a smaller brake pad before the Sprinter started carrying passengers in 2008. The change was made, Schnall said, to stop a high-pitched squeal.

The agency’s safety chief, Tom Tulley, wrote about the brake pad switch in March in a blog post, though the agency had not definitely labeled that the cause of the rapid wear.

State regulators agree with that conclusion.

In an email Thursday, Christopher Chow, a spokesman for the California Public Utilities Commission, said that the brake pad switch out “was the likely causal factor in the accelerated rotor wear.” He cautioned, however that “for a more thorough conclusion the matter may warrant additional investigation by NCTD and the manufacturer.”

Transit officials said Saturday’s restart would be a full restoration of service, with trains departing every half hour. They will run on the same schedule as before the closure and stop at all 15 stations.

The first westbound train will depart from the Escondido Transit Center at 4:33 a.m. The first eastbound trains leave at 4:56 a.m. train from the Vista Transit Center and 5:33 a.m. from the Oceanside Transit Center, Castillo said.